OCHPosts*

To celebrate the release of Chance The Rapper’s Coloring Book on Spotify, TIDAL, and all things not Apple Music, I bring to you all a moment of realization: album covers (or album artwork) are becoming a lot less of what they’re supposed to be: an illustration that tells you what the album is. Just take a look at this compilation of album covers for albums that were released within the first 4 months of this year.

 Not even half way through 2016 pic.twitter.com/DNoveKnAtx

— Daily Raps (@DaiIyRaps) April 28, 2016

 In all honesty it’s not a big deal that most of those album covers don’t actually have the name of the artist or the album itself written anywhere on it, modern media has made it easier to put an artwork to a name and title. Even if you didn’t know what the name of the album was or who made it, there’s a chance that Google or your music streaming service could help you figure it out. If we took all those aids out of the equation though, then the fact that artists are following a trend of not putting any of the album’s information on the front cover might become a little problematic and a bit of a game, and that’s exactly what we’re going to make out of it.

 Below are several album covers that either don’t have the album name, artist name, or none of that information printed anywhere on the cover. If you can correctly tell the album and artist name from its artwork, then you have truly transcended all corners of the music and internet realm and you should be pretty proud of yourself (or start rethinking how you spend your time). If you can’t get through all of them in one go, then at least have some fun realizing that “Man, these artists should probably put some labels on these.” Don’t get help from the internet, and I promise you that none of these is just some random picture I added to trick you. They are all actual album covers released by actual artists.

Ready?

Go.

#MUSICTuesday

We Nigerians were gifted with one more (actually two more but one that we actually got to hear) international collaboration and this time it’s with the Trap Queen singer himself. If you had never heard of Ayo Jay before this one certainly put him on the map, for the most part.

#MUSICTuesday

Due to last week’s special #MUSICTuesday, what I had planned before has been served to you all today. Not much to say here that hasn’t already been heard, but if you haven’t heard this collaboration yet then you’re really missing out on some good music. Wizkid + Drake + Skepta?? That’s 3 different continents’ worth of music people.

#MUSICTuesday

So coincidentally this is a special #MUSICTuesday... Today is actually my girlfriend’s birthday. Yes yes, call me a fagit all you want, I’ve been told I’m cheesy and all that (truth is I’m hopeless), but sadly I couldn’t be with her today (thankfully gave out the gifts early). So this one is for her, and all you Bieber fans out there, because there’s no where I’d rather be today than in her arms tbh (Call me fagit now).

Die In Your Arms - Justin Bieber

#MUSICTuesday

Once again, I’m not foregoing a #MUSICTuesday. I hope this one will still be worth it though. I couldn’t believe it when I heard it, and the video will make you appreciate it even more, but Timi Dakolo is the most amazing Nigerian vocalist I never knew. His style is something I hadn’t yet seen in the industry and I’m happy I found this.

Only two African cities have been featured on Snapchat

Cape Town became the first African city to be featured in Snapchat on April 27th, 2015. They had also gotten a “TGIF” story a while before then. The next African city, Nairobi, was featured a month later on May 25th, with some significant backlash from some unhappy Americans. 

41 days and many many cities later, Africa still waits for it’s 3rd city on Snapchat’s Featured Cities. I in particular have hoped that my summer here in Nigeria would be remembered with a Snapchat feature, and as I continue to lose time and grow impatient, I’ve written up a plea in hopes that the folks at Snapchat will finally get the message:

Dear Snapchat,

How far? I guess I should start by saying I love your app and your work. You’ve really changed the game (Indifferent about the new update, but that’s one for another day). Your Featured City Stories are what I find most interesting. They sometimes tend to show a part of the world you never knew, and that’s cool, but in that light Africa has been rather under-represented.

Out of the over 40 cities already visited, some more than once, Africa has only come through twice (shouts to Cape Town & Nairobi), and I get it, African Snapchat users might be bare, but we ARE here, definitely in Lagos, Nigeria, Africa’s largest city. Yes, Lagos should be your next featured African city, and it should be soon.

There’s so much that Lagos has to offer the viewers out there, and if it seems no one is giving you the right snaps to upload, I’ll make all the right posts. I keep up with the featured city stories, I know what y’all like to see, trust me Snapchat bros, I gotchu: 

Let’s make the day a Friday. I’ll be up early for work and don some traditional attire if you like that. I’ll make sure I point out Lagos on a map before I leave. On the way to work I’ll show off Lagos’ morning rush hour. I’ll make sure I get good shots of cars lined up for fuel as they usually are, making traffic even worse. I’ll make sure I show an argument with between motorists, because Nigerians are angry people. At work I’ll shirk off a bit to make some bored-at-work snaps (I’ll be bored anyway), I’ll head up to the roof of our building and show off the Lagos skyline, plus shots of Obalende, the area where my office building is. You’ll love Obalende. Lunch time will include the best plate of Nigerian jollof rice you ever did see (not to be mistaken with the inauthentic Ghanaian jollof rice). I’ll get out of work early and we’ll go cruising. We’ll visit the best shawarma spots and suya joints, we’ll drive past the biggest buildings we’ve got, and walk through as many open markets we can visit, maybe even drive down the Third Mainland Bridge, Africa’s longest bridge, even though I don’t live on the other side of that. Yes, all through this drive it’ll be nothing but Naija music from the aux cord.

In the evening we’ll hit one of Lagos’ many beaches. There’ll be beach soccer everywhere, and you will get that sunset I know y’all love to see. Later at night I could hail an Uber car and show you all the night time turn up. I’m more of a house party person so we probably won’t go into any clubs. I could also show off the night sky, I’ve got a telescope for that, or we could just chill and watch something on DSTV.

And I promise you, I’m not alone in this Lagos. There will be other guys who will send you snaps of their food, their lifestyle, their struggle, and their endless turn up, but everything you see shall be enlightening, all the places you see shall be interesting, and every eyebrow you see shall be on fleek. You just have to give Lagos a try. Give Nigeria a try. Give Africa it’s 3rd featured city.

I’ll be in Lagos for the whole month of July, Snapchat. Don’t let me down.

Signed, Oche from OCHPosts*

Pls.

#MUSICTuesday

You didn’t think I was gonna forget #MUSICTuesday did you?? I will apologize for some poor planning on my part, but I hope today’s song will make up for it. I just recently copped Jack Ü’s Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü, and asides every other great song on this generally great album by two of the greats in dancehall music, “Where Are Ü Now” still stands out for me.

Just working out a few kinks...

Yeah, I know, this looks bad. After a second revival, I’ve once again failed to live up to my own status quo. I’m not going to say I have excuses, but there have been things that have come up which currently share the time I have for OCHPosts*, the most impacting of these being that I recently got a summer job.

Yes, I am locked in the grip of the corporate hand, which takes away a good part of my weekdays. I do what I can, but with the very informative articles that I have and had planned, the week no longer seems sufficient to plan and produce those. 

I also just recently revived my graphic design work. After months of keeping that part of me dormant, a good friend of mine contacted me for help with the album artwork for his upcoming EP “Man In The City,” which he will be releasing tonight. Realizing the fun I had been missing working on that stuff, I decided to go a little more mainstream with the graphic design, and that also became the basis of why I got hired for my summer job: I help with graphic design in the marketing department of one of Nigeria’s leading software solutions companies.

So with the job, graphic design and OCHPosts*, I’m going to have to change the frequency/style of Main Posts. The size of Main Posts is probably just going to shrink now. I’ll still be writing long-ish, informative articles on certain things (the 3-part Entertainment Industry Series is definitely still on, just pushing back the dates on those), but most times it’ll be relatively short articles; still fun, still a bit silly, still on important things you should know. Also, I’ll be moving the release time from 12PM to 3PM WAT, still on Sundays. I try to keep it at an early time of the day for those who read news articles at early times.

That’s pretty much all the change. #MUSICTuesdays are still on, and still my most successful posts. Side Posts will still come and go. So you see, that wasn’t so bad! 

I do it under the OCH™ name

So the initial reason why I went on my significantly short hiatus from OCHPosts* was because of a request I got from my man D.K., whose EP, “Man In The City,” drops soon. He asked me for help with the artwork for the EP, and with that regained the fun of designing album artwork and all around graphic design.

I had already started work on the Main Post for that week, the first part of a 3-part series on the Nigerian Entertainment Industry, but I had to put it on hold to reach meet the release date for the EP. While getting all that done I continued to experiment and eventually crafted my first official trademark for any future designs I do.

Graphic design is something I’ve always done on the side since I started making music some 5 years ago, but both those hobbies of mine have been dormant till now. I’m hoping more people will contact me for designs they’d like done. I deal mostly with album artwork and wallpapers, and I’m gaining some skill with posters.

Of course, I’m not going to tell without having something to show. Here’s some of the work I’ve done this summer, rate me if you want: 

... And that’s my official logo/trademark. The color varies all the time: no official color really.

Here’s one celebrating equal love and pride,

#MUSICTuesday

Yes, I know that I’ve got some ‘splaining to do concerning Sunday, and I’ll get to it, but for now let’s all just appreciate some good music. I might have been a little late to download my own copy of American Beauty/American Psycho, but I had already streamed the whole thing months before, and asides Centuries, Uma Thurman is my next best track. I also just watched both volumes of Kill Bill at a go, perfect timing!

#MUSICTuesday

I’ve been working on my upcoming Sunday article so much that I was actually ill-prepared for today. “Riptide” was the first song I got to download when the summer started and it’s been a constant for me so far.

Before we begin: no, this isn’t another one of those compare-and-contrast, bash-the-industry type posts you’ve seen before... for the most part. My main goal with this blog and all its posts is to pass on knowledge and hopefully meaningful opinions through research and well processed thought, and that right there is a mission statement that should at least sound official enough to stick with me on this.

So this summer has mostly been me opening up to new things. I’ve been test-driving services like Uber and Jumia.com, watching all sorts of shows and movies, trying out restaurants and what not, and gaining more insight on the world we live in. Inspired by two new things I tried out this past week (which I will get to of course), there's no better way to talk about it than by taking a jab at the industry as a whole, but this is something I’d like to touch on so extensively I’ll be talking about it on separate Sundays in a 3-part series.

Part 1 of 3: Music - Songs, Suits & Sunglasses will be posted on here next Sunday, and I know it sounds like it’s going to be boring, but trust me it’s not going to suck. I’m the one writing here remember? Me? The guy that punched that old  lady in the boob two Thanksgivings ago?? That’s another story, but this is just the beginning of another! So do please watch this space over the following weeks, Part 1 of 3 will be posted NEXT Sunday, 21st June, 2015!

This is undoubtedly John Oliver’s best ever work on Last Week Tonight. I guarantee you can look at this over and over and laugh every single time!

#MUSICTuesday

Keeping to the promise I made on Sunday that every post this week will be photo related, I’m bringing this one back! So here’s to all the selfie-shooting, Instagram-posting, Snapchat story movie-directing, bathroom mirror reverse-selfie-taking, selfie stick-wielding, sorority group-photo-for-any-damn-reason taking music lovers out there; of which I am not a part of :)

#MUSICTuesday

I’ve been following D-O (@Kvng_DO) for a while now and until “Karashika” I thought he was still growing and getting there. “Tinko Ko” came out before and the fact that it’s been remastered by D-Tunes today shows that growth, I liked this so much I downloaded it immediately, and you probably should too, and follow him, and watch his space... Or else.

Well by “Photos,” I mean separate apps both named Photos: Photos for OS X and Google Photos.

A photo is everything now, because if something can speak a thousand words so easily, why would we waste our saliva when we have phones that can do that for us with ease, and filters to boot? With smartphones, and Instagram, and GIFs, and the moment our parents learnt the word “selfie” and thought it was so hip that they took it to a new level with the selfie stick: we've all become photographers in our own way (some more skilled than others, thank you very much). Apps have been created to make everyone feel like an editing, photo-filtering pro, and more importantly the space to store all these memories has quintupled thanks to cloud storage, which has never really been 100% free to enjoy... until about a week ago! And yes I will get to that and share with you the goodness of free cloud storage, but first we must acknowledge the title of this article and talk about the two newest (and biggest) photo apps so far this year (Or you can just skip down to Google Photos, that’s the good stuff!).

Photos for OS X

Hoping to revamp their below-par, native photo-editing desktop app, Apple released Photos with the latest update of OS X Yosemite earlier this year, replacing iPhoto on your Mac’s dock with the iPhone-esque Photos (Spoiler-alert: iPhoto will still lurk among your computer’s apps, refusing to be forgotten).

If you’re like me, iPhoto was nothing more than that annoying app that popped open any time you plugged in your iOS device to your Mac. It’s interface wasn’t very pleasing and the one time I hoped to use it for some basic photo editing it underwhelmed. It actually made me miss Windows for a while. Scary. Photos promised a smoother editing and sharing experience, and continuity between your Mac and your iOS devices, and for the most part it lived up the hype.

Photos’ interface is pretty much your iOS Photos app on a desktop, and that’s ok, that’s an improvement. It brings some simplicity to the app and really helps with navigating and looking for time and location based photos. As for seamlessly connecting your Mac and iOS devices, you will need to make sure iCloud Photo Sharing is turned on on all your devices, something which literally took me about 3 weeks to figure out because in all it’s simplicity Photos doesn’t really give you any indication on how that works, I had to open the app’s Quick Tour for that one. Of course dealing with Apple and iCloud means nothing comes cheap, so you are only entitled to 5GB of free cloud storage and the price goes up from there.

One of Photos’ stronger features though is Faces, it’s face recognition album that analyzes your photo library and makes out the individual faces in each picture, and can match that face with a name on your contact list if you already have a picture of that person. Face recognition isn’t a new thing of course but Photos actually made sorting through my photos and matching names with faces a fun activity, and it automatically saves the faces as contact pictures for your contacts. Why this isn’t a feature on iOS devices is what Apple needs to explain.

I haven’t gotten to try out photo editing on the app yet but Apple promises a comprehensive set of powerful but easy-to-use editing tools, and from what I’ve seen it’s basically your choice of filters with advanced knobs and gears and I’m not kidding it starts to look somewhat complex after a while. The way I see it though you’ll probably get by with just choosing a filter for your picture and maybe adjusting saturation if you want to feel like a pro.

Photos probably won’t do you much good if you’re a hardcore photo editor/graphic designer, but if your the simple, give-the-picture-some-panache type of person, it’s aii.

Google Photos... & Free Unlimited Cloud Storage!

All right, the good stuff!

So last week was Google I/O, Google’s developer conference in which it unveils new ideas and concepts for the future of the company and the world at large, and this year Google officially launched Google Photos on Android, the web, and iOS, with everyone in the world at mind.

... I don’t even know where to start. I guess I’ll just say it now: Google Photos comes with free unlimited cloud storage. Yes. No catch. Sorta. Let me explain...

Today, we take more photos every 2 minutes than everyone, everywhere took in the 1800s. #io15 pic.twitter.com/jxAMLdtOMx

— Google (@google) May 28, 2015

An early incarnation of Google Photos actually existed as a side feature of Google+ which I knew as Google Auto Backup (Yes, I’m on Google+, don’t judge me). This feature backed up all the photos on the Android phone that I had at the time, and stored them in Google Drive. With the exuberant amount of photos we’re stockpiling these days though, Google decided to create Photos off this concept, but with NO LIMIT, ABSOLUTELY FREE, “for high quality photos and videos.” That *high quality* simply means photos up to 16-megapixels and video up to 1080p HD, but no need to panic, this is no problem at all! iPhones can only take pictures up to 8-megapixels, and most Android smartphone cameras peak at 16MP, so you will most definitely be backing up ALL your smartphone photos to Google Photos for free, and with this Google hopes that you can store all your photos for lifetimes! The only real drawbacks are that photos only backup while the phone screen is active and the app is open, but this shouldn’t be a problem after your initial backup (which will be your longest), also higher quality photos and videos would have to abide by the basic Google Drive rates: 15GB free for startsies, and the price goes up from there.

Even though unlimited storage is its main selling point, Google Photos still has some pretty impressive features up its code. Its layout both in the app and online look good and are easy to navigate, and searching for a photo brings the best results when you’ve got the world’s #1 search engine involved.  The app makes use of some “smart” technology (which isn’t facial recognition) that can detect all sorts of things in a picture and categorize each picture into “People,” “Places,” and “Things.” You can then search with keywords such as “dog” or “rain” or “West Virginia” and you get a picture from your collection with whatever or wherever you searched for. It works almost too well, and honestly it might blow your mind.

Google Photos’ best feature though is the Assistant. Asides from the basic photo editing tools you can expect to find in the app, Google added an “Assistant” that auto-detects similarities between photos or certain features of photos that it can use to add amazing effects.

Google Auto Backup silently had this feature, and I knew I would miss it once I switched to an iPhone, but as my photos slowly backed up to the cloud through WiFi, the app notified me that the assistant had created effects to some of my pictures...

...

...

In honor of this award-deserving app, this week on here will be #PhotosWeek. All my posts on here will be Photo-themed, with a #PhotoOfTheWeek to be revealed at the end of the week.

...

#MUSICTuesday

“Little Games” is no doubt the group’s most popular song, but thanks to the FIFA 14 Soundtrack the St. Lucia Remix is probably more familiar in the average listener’s ears. Maybe you’ll hear the original version from me next week, not sure which I prefer. *Spoiler Alert* don’t let their name fool you, the group is American.